Isaiah 58.9b-14; Luke 13.10-17
A woman praises God in gratitude that Jesus set her free from an 18-year infirmity. The crowd, seeing the wonderful things that Jesus has done, rejoices. As for the leader of the synagogue? He looks silly and thoughtless, annoyed at Jesus’ act of mercy and goodness; all he can do is criticize.
Now since our Lord calls that man a hypocrite, it’s easy to think that we should add our own voice to such disapproval. Throughout the gospels, it’s tempting to point out the problems of the religious leaders in Jesus’ day: Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, and now this man responsible for overseeing the religious and administrative affairs of this house of worship. But it could be that the criticism comes too easily. We still use the word ‘Pharisee’ to describe someone who is self-righteous and hypocritical. Maybe it gives the feeling that we are standing on our Lord’s side when we do that, a bump of self-satisfaction. Only I can’t help but wonder if such quick criticism blinds us from seeing the ongoing ways that religious people, we Christians included, often act the same way. After all, the gospels tell stories like this, not so that we use them as a weapon against others, but as a mirror where we might find our own lives reflected back at us.
A friend of mine once told me about walking around a church that he had stopped in to visit. As he was exploring the nooks and crannies to get a sense of what the place was like, he noticed that wherever he went, whatever rooms he walked in, there were signs on the walls, usually handwritten, with rules and policies laid out. And the tone of those signs was pretty unfriendly. Each sign was less about welcoming others and more about controlling them. The worst one was posted in a Sunday School classroom. It said, “Jesus died for your sins. The least you can do is behave.” The synagogue leader in today’s gospel has nothing on that! Even we Christians can look silly and thoughtless in response to God’s grace in Jesus Christ.
You can be sure that there won’t be signs like that in our Sunday School classrooms for the coming year. And I would like to think that if a demonstration of God’s healing power happened here on a Sunday morning, the local person responsible for the religious and administrative affairs of this house of worship—yours truly—would respond with praise, not pettiness.
Even so, I want to try to get in the mind of the synagogue leader. Because from his perspective the problem isn’t Jesus’ healing; it’s that the healing took place on the Sabbath. And the command about the Sabbath in the scriptures is clear. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work.” Since healing was included among the things considered as work, it was, therefore, was prohibited on the Sabbath. So the synagogue leader isn’t wrong when he points out there are other days when work can be done.
On top of that, this woman has been burdened for 18 years. That’s 6575 days, if you add a handful of leap years. What’s an extra day in all those days, especially when one of God’s own commandments is at stake? “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.”
The synagogue leader has both scripture and reason on his side. But not grace. Because the longer you look at him and listen to what he is saying, you start to hear the sort of message that sounds something like, ‘God gave us the Sabbath as rest and relief from the burdens of life; the least you can do on that day is behave.’
This indignant reaction to the gift of Jesus’ healing power today opens the door to discover the true purpose of the Sabbath as a gift of God’s grace for us: how our lives are meant to be lived in response to that grace and shaped by the Holy Spirit. This isn’t merely a debate about what constitutes ‘work’ on the Sabbath, but about the meaning of who we are in God, who we are meant to be in God.
And this is where Jesus uncovers a deep irony in the synagogue leader’s severe approach. ‘You untie your donkey on the Sabbath and give it water, don’t you? Why shouldn’t this woman be cared for?’ It is hard to disagree with that logic. If exceptions can be made for livestock, why not a person made in God’s image? Because freedom from burdens is God’s first intent and priority for the Sabbath.
It is a day to be free from the daily demand to achieve as though productivity and work make us who we are. But it’s more than our work, too. The constant pressure to prove our worth on social media or the anxious frenzy that seems to accompany us from the minute we wake up until the minute we fall asleep (if we can even get to sleep)—these are also burdens we need to be freed from. The synagogue leader sees Sabbath as restriction, where rules prohibit activity. Jesus sees Sabbath as a gift for human well-being; a kind of sacrament of healing, freedom, and the restoration of who we are in God; a hint and glimpse of what life in God is meant to be every day of the week.
And this freedom, this grace, this life in God received as a gift is meant to lead us to care for others in the same way: grace extended for their well-being. The Sabbath not only reorients our life to God and in God; it reorients our life toward the people around us.
When God gave the command for the Sabbath in Deuteronomy, God was clear that this gift was meant to be shared with others. ‘Remember that you were once in bondage in Egypt and I gave you freedom,’ God says through Moses. ‘Now offer that same freedom to others.’ Those others include family members, servants, livestock and, according to the Lord, the “aliens residing among you.” All of them were to experience a hint and glimpse of life and dignity in God on the Sabbath—grace extended for the well-being of our neighbors.
Isaiah, in today’s first reading, echoes this theme. The prophet connects observing the Sabbath to the ways that God’s desires are made real and present among us: to step off the treadmill of self-interest and to take a step toward serving the interests of others; to quit blaming victims or gossiping about other people’s sins; to be generous with the hungry and give yourselves to the down-and-out. Sabbath, at its heart, means releasing burdens, not adding new ones; life in God is meant to delight, not constrain.
This is what the leader of the synagogue missed; it’s perhaps what the religiously devout of every time and place are prone to miss—so busy reviewing rules and posting policies that human need is overlooked, including the woman created in God’s image needing restoration, freedom, and grace. The healing that Christ gives on the Sabbath, then, is not his refusing to behave; it is precisely what the Sabbath is for, because that is precisely what Jesus is for: God’s gift for human well-being.
A woman praises God. A crowd rejoices. I pray that we, too, would rejoice because Jesus’ gifts of freedom and new life are for us. The woman’s need for release from her infirmity is obvious, of course. But the religiously devout synagogue leader has a real need for healing, too: to be freed from the captivity to posted policies and graceless words; to be restored in God’s grace.
And for us? You know your need for healing in all its aspects: physical, emotional, spiritual, perhaps even the hypocrisy that gladly receives God’s grace in your life but refuses to extend it to others. Restoration, freedom, and new life in Jesus are not meant to be kept to ourselves. They are God’s gifts to us meant to be shared through us for the sake of others so that, together, all people would rejoice. “The grace of God is not intended to weigh us down, but to lift us up,” says Peter Gomes. “Life in God is not a chain, it is a key; not a shackle, but wings. Whenever religion seeks to bind where God would free, it has lost the good news.”
Christ himself is our Sabbath, says the New Testament letter of Hebrews. And in another place, Jesus says of himself, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Christ is our Sabbath—not a day of the week but a person who gives himself for you; the sacrament and sign of what life in God is meant to be every day of the week: healing, freedom, and the restoration of who we are in God.
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